It's ok. The 1997 BR DVD was print sourced from what appears to be a 70mm blowup print, and also pushed slightly in some of the coloring. You also get nasty blocky artifacts and noise throughout from being an early disc with bad encoding. The LD Director's Cut actually looks a bit more natural. What you're seeing on the later versions of the DC and archival cuts is the intended image. The only thing that may be lost is the timing due to the original print stock utilized etc. The Criterion International cut LD seems to have a bit more saturation as well to my eyes.

On Apocalypse, I agree. I first saw the 1992 VHS which has a distinct color that was all but gone on the Dossier DVDs. It looks fine on the first 1999 DVD I think. However this was color timing done for the home release specifically, I guess to bring out the theatrical colors on CRT screens. It is the same as a 1991 Widescreen Laserdisc. (which is excellent and has the theatrical audio directly ported to PCM ProLogic)